U-Antwerp students and Nestlé work on more sustainable packaging
To design packaging that fits into the circular economy and that is sustainable all through its life cycle is a major challenge for all companies, including Nestlé. Nestlé Belgilux had some challenges to eliminate the plastic shrink for some of their promopacks and contacted Pack it Better to address potential improvements regarding eco-design.
For such matters, Pack it Better collaborates with experts and knowledge centers to tackle the issue. We thus got in touch with our expert from the Department Product development of the University of Antwerp, who has a high expertise in this particular field. Since 1995 she teaches the course Eco-Design also in many different knowledge institutes. This was an ideal opportunity to bring in different approaches and test alternative ideas. After a short lecture reflecting packaging and the circular economy a brainstorm session with the students was organized. The knowledge and creativity led to a number of ‘out of the box’ ideas.
As an outcome of this transversal collaboration, Nestlé received a detailed paper of each student, explaining their eco-design project, with a focus on circular economy, to solve this packaging design challenge. Nestlé Belgilux is now investigating the proposals, taken into account a number of important parameters such as operational processes and logistics, to see if and how they could be locally implemented.
We look forward to see the outcome!